Velcro Baseball

I have distinct memories of growing up playing with my Nana's set of small, felt baseball gloves that had accompanying small yellow balls, each with two bands of velcro wrapped around it, so that the balls would stick to the gloves. Great way for little kids to learn to play catch!

When Nana passed away, I brought this game home, eager to share the fun with Ivie. Though she still hasn't learned the art of actually moving the glove to catch the ball, if you are able to hit her glove with the ball, she does great and really enjoys playing. The set came to my house with 2 balls and 2 gloves. In the past year, though, we've managed to misplace one of the balls, although I was sure it was somewhere lying around the house...

Fast-forward to nap time today. Macie and Ivie were both quietly in their rooms, though I could still hear Ivie talking to her princesses (5 of which went to nap with her today) as I wandered around collecting laundry. Then, without warning, Ivie abruptly stopped talking to them and, instead, started calling incessantly for her daddy. Who was downstairs and presumably hadn't turned the monitor on yet. So I dropped the laundry and went into her room, wondering what the "emergency" would be this time (empty water cup, needed to "hold my hand" for "one minute", wanted her door open, etc.).

When I walked in, Ivie exclaimed, "My Cinderella has a ball in her hair!". Walking over and looking more closely, sure enough, hidden and horribly intertwined in Cinderella's light blonde hair, was the missing yellow ball! And, thanks to the velcro, it didn't plan on going anywhere any time soon...

So mystery of the missing velcro ball is solved. And afterward, while looking in the toy basket for the gloves to reunite the full set, I also found the missing Nightingale (the letter "N" on our animal sound mat). Now if I could only find the "H" from our alphabet puzzle, all would be right in my anal, don't-like-to-lose-stuff-but-it's-a-lost-cause-with-small-children world.